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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Good Will Hunting - 1997

Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a janitor at M.I.T. and he has a brain that is unusually brilliant in such things as math and chemistry, though he has no clue just how smart he is. A math professor finds out about Will's gift, and tries desperately to get him to leave his small town neighborhood, and make a name for himself in the world. But the professor needs help, so he asks an old friend named Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who is also currently a teacher, to assist in getting Will's life on track. Meanwhile, for the first time ever, Will is falling in love and is trying to live his own life, rejecting any help offered.

The main thing I got from the film Good Will Hunting, is that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon should have a director/writer duo. I think if Affleck was in the chair, and Damon handling the screenplay, with them making movies till their careers end, cinema would have some brilliant films in the next few years. That aside, I bet you could not guess, but I loved Good Will Hunting. I will go ahead and say I don't think it is a masterpiece, but this is one fantastic piece of film making. In the past twenty years, if I made a top 10 best screenplays list, Good Will Hunting would be there. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were that good, not to mention their acting.

Affleck is, as we all know, not one of the best actors of our time. However, every now and then I have known him to slip an underrated performance into his career. Such as this one, and more recently The Town. He plays in all these cheesy romance flicks that give him a terrible name, but just in general, especially in this film, he is an alright actor. I would go as far as saying his performance is good, if not very good. If you are a Matt Damon fan, this is a film for you, as he plays the lead perfectly. The character of Will Hunting is brought to life in such ways that only an actor gifted from birth can pull it off. Though I must admit, the most brilliant performance of the film was hands down Robin Williams. Powerful, incredible, emotional, amazing, phenomenal, whatever you want to say, and his performance had all of it. He is an often overlooked actor, and one that deserves more recognition than he gets. completely deserving of his Oscar.

Gus Van Sant is a director that I am hardly at all familiar with, but his remake of Psycho was enough for me to be scared of every film he makes. And I do think he is credited more than he should be for the brilliance of this film. Good Will Hunting is lifted by its screenplay and performances, not Gus Van Sant's direction. It was good, but not great.

Overall, Good Will Hunting may not make it onto my favorites list, but it is by no means anything short of an incredible film. Unbelievably good acting, and an absolutely phenomenal screenplay make this a film worth watching more than one time.

4 comments:

Great review! This is one of those films where I knew the name, but didn't know what it was actually about (I'm a terrible Cinema studies student, haha). I tend to favour Robin Williams in his dramatic roles, rather than his comedy. I adored him in Dead Poets Society.

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About Me

I am a 16 year old American and amateur film critic that loves movies. I look at them not as entertainment, but as art. The way I critique films may not always be considered "proper", because that is not my goal. I have made this blog to improve my knowledge of cinema, and share my opinions along the way.